On Saturday, my wife needed to take my daughter back to Syracuse for her sophomore year. Well, we were both going to go, but my daughter had so much stuff that I couldn't fit into the car. I tried to act disappointed (I truly would have enjoyed the time with my daughter and would have been glad to keep my wife company on the drive home), but immediately began planning some fishing instead.
Even though the White River has seen temps drop, I decided to try another stretch of water that I try to hit at least once a year. It's a stretch of the Black River, upstream from Coventry, where the river goes through a forest, rather than the open pasture land that it meanders through for a lot of its journey in that area. It's not a hard spot to find - just off Route 14. If you use Google maps, and follow the river path, look for wooded areas.
This stretch offers almost a mile of fishing in the trees, but the lower 400 yards or so are where I tend to do best. My very first step was to measure the water temperature. With so much of the river running through open fields, it can get pretty warm. But, I found the water to be 67F in mid-afternoon, so everything was fine. I started with some standard nymphs - Prince and Hare's ear. On my third or fourth cast, I felt a tepid strike, a fish jumped, and that was that. I don't know if I ever really had a chance to hook him or not, but he seemed to spit the fly very quickly. From there, I started working downstream.
As I moved from hole to hole, I was surprised by the complete lack of strikes. Normally, this 400 yard stretch yields a strike in almost every hole and 5-10 fish in the 90-120 minutes it takes me to cover the water.
After nothing in about 6 consecutive holes, I got to my "can't miss" hole. The first time I fished this stretch of water, my son skipped a riffle followed by a pool by a big rock in the river. He had his eyes on some nicer looking water downstream and walked right past this spot. I stepped in and took three fish quickly. I've never failed to catch a fish in this pool, and obviously never failed to have a strike. But on Saturday, nothing. The next few holes are also usually very productive and I had no strikes at all.
At this point, after driving 90+ minutes, I was surprised and disappointed. I knew that fishing in the White the week before had been dead until the last 30 minutes before sunset. So, I could wait it out and see if the fishing turned on later.
Or, I could go to the falls in Coventry and see if I could lure a big brown from the depths of the water below the falls. Or, I could head towards home and fish the Lamoille, Winooski or Dog.
I was thinking about my choices as I walked back to my car. When I got to the car, I decided to try the hole where I'd started again. On my first cast, I hooked a fish that felt pretty strong, but I think it was just the current that made a small fish feel bigger. Regretfully, the fish spit my fly almost immediately. I toyed with the idea of re-fishing the stretch I'd just hit, hoping the fish were turning on, but instead, I got in my car and headed towards home.
I decided I'd fish the Dog on the way home. I didn't have a lot of light left, so I opted for my favorite hole on the river. The first thing I discovered is that my standard parking spot now sports a "No Parking" sign. That meant a different parking spot and a long walk to the river. But, I had time.
As I finally got to the water, after fighting my way through a forest of Japanese knotweed, I noticed a few bugs in the air. Fishing the White most of the time, hatches of any sort are pretty rare. These were BWOs, and I was mostly interested in bigger fish, so I went with a size 12 BWO. On one of my earlier casts, in the lower part of the stretch I was fishing, a small fish batted the fly. I've caught small fish in this hole before, but large fish as well. I was happy to see that my fly seemed too big for the smaller fish.
I had a couple more fake strikes from small fish as I worked to the top of the hole. The key spot in this hole is some calm water created by a rock in the river. Just below that rock, the water holds some big fish, and a friend had taken an 18" rainbow when I showed him this hole.
On my very first cast into that key spot, my fly was inhaled as soon as it touched the water. The fish ended up being about 15" - a wild rainbow. It looked like it had had an encounter with an osprey - an injury on its back near the dorsal fin, but it seemed quite healthy and fat otherwise. The fish had taken the fly very deep - close to the gills, and I simply couldn't get the fly out. Part of the problem I have is my close-up vision, which is terrible. I have flip-down magnifiers, but they aren't very useful when a fish is trying to flop around. I got the fish back in the water in my net, and pulled out my reading glasses. Even with them, I couldn't reach the fly and I eventually gave up and clipped the line. The fly was barbless, so I'm hoping it worked out on its own.
It was getting darker, so I tried a different fly - an attractor pattern that was easy to see. A few casts later, I took another rainbow just as the fly started to sink into the film. Then, that fly wouldn't float any more, even after some Loon Top Ride, so I switched back to a smaller BWO. Again, some smaller fish batted at it, but no hookups. Now, it was getting fairly dark, and I had to walk back to my car on a curvy road with no shoulders. I hate doing this walk in the dark. So, I called it a day.
So, the spot that I expected to give me some easy wild rainbows completely skunked me. And the Dog, which fishes better every year since Hurricane Irene, gave me two nice bows. One of these years, I swear I'm going to catch one of the big browns that inhabit the Dog. At least 2/3 of the fish I take from the Dog are bows, and the browns I get are all juveniles. But, sooner or later, I'll get a big brown out of there.
With the holiday weekend coming up, I have family visiting for part of the weekend. But, Sunday is reserved for a day on the Battenkill with a friend. I've never fished the Battenkill, and we delayed this trip from a couple weeks ago until this weekend. My biggest concern is water levels, which are down all across the state.
After an extremely wet spring and June, it's gotten a lot drier the past few weeks, and while river temperatures are OK with our cooler nights, the flows are getting kind of low.
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